Hello and welcome to the program UFO Warning.
In this episode we're talking about the Muncie IN UFO flap.
That's correct, the Muncie IN UFO flap.
Now this actually happened back in October 1973.
Did a little research on AI about this.
It says the big picture sudden flap, not isolated sightings.
What happened in Muncie wasn't a single event.
It was a classic UFO flap, meaning a concentrated surge of
sightings over a short time. In October 1973, reports
exploded into the hundreds across Muncie and Delaware
County. The activity peaked over just
five to six days, suggesting A localized time bound phenomena.
Police were overwhelmed with 100 calls in a short span, many
describing similar objects. Now remember 1972?
This was a long time before cell phones came on the scene.
Now this Clustering matters. Random misidentifications don't
usually synchronize like that across large numbers of
witnesses. And what people actually saw
well across reports, several consistent characteristics
appear #1 low flying, structured objects.
Witness repeatedly described objects hovering at low
altitude, sometimes near treetop level, disc, oblong or undefined
shapes, stationary behavior followed by sudden rapid
movement. Many sightings weren't lights in
the sky at high altitude, they were close range encounters.
I think that's important that these things were seen up close.
Now there were multi colored lights.
That was a key pattern. It's a dominant feature, red,
green, blue and white lights. Lights pulsed, rotated or
changed intensity objects that seem to dim and brighten
intentionally. And this matches broader 1973
sightings in the US were multi colored low altitude lights or
signature Kind of thinking of Steven Spielberg here with the
with the big giant flying saucer there in the in the third kind,
a silent or near silent movement.
Several reports emphasize little to no sound movement that didn't
resemble aircraft and sudden acceleration or vertical
departure. Now this is important because
the 1970s aircraft, even helicopters had very distinct
sound profiles. You know, we're not talking
about stealth bombers or drones or anything like that.
Now, there was a high strangeness layer.
And this is where it gets interesting.
This is where months he goes beyond typical UFO sightings.
There was a landing report, one of the most compelling cases.
A woman reported a craft landing in her backyard.
A neighbor heard clicking mechanical noises and a
responding deputy stated that this lady was generally
frightened and credible. That combination visual and
auditory, plus law enforcement response is notable.
And there was an entities encounter, so we actually have
an alien encounter here. Perhaps the most famous and
unsettling report was a caller told police there are people out
here that aren't people. The description included
silvery, scaled appearance, nonhuman characteristics.
Now you can dismiss this as panic or imagination, but it
does align with a broader 1973 humanoid wave across the country
where entity sightings accompanied UFOs.
And that correlation is hard to ignore if you're looking at
patterns rather than just isolated stories.
Now, there were also geographic clusterings or hotspots.
Sightings weren't evenly distributed, the intersection of
Wheeling Ave. and Mcgalliard Rd. became a repeated hotspot,
Multiple independent witnesses reportedly reported activity in
the same area, and hotspot behavior is a reoccurring
feature in UFO cases globally. It makes sense, especially if
these things are interdimensional, that they'd be
honing in on one particular spot that was also a social impact
from fear to cultural saturation.
This wasn't just a few people talking.
I took over the entire town. Police lines were flooded with
calls, there was widespread discussion in local media, and
businesses even leaned into the UFO theme promotions.
It followed a classic pattern, confusion, fear, normalization,
and commercialization. We still see this pattern today.
Confusion, fear, normalization, commercialization.
People see him, they get confused, they get a little bit
afraid. It becomes normal after a while,
and then eventually somebody commercializes it, whether it's
a store running in alien spacials or whether it's, you
know, other exports. And debunkers profiting off the
topic now attempts to explain it away.
As expected, explanations followed.
There are reflections from tinfoil or neon lights, weather
balloons, of course, aircraft with banners, possible
helicopter misidentifications, and some of these likely explain
individual sightings. But they struggle with the
volume of reports, the close range encounters the entity
claims, and the synchronized timing.
In other words, explanations exist, but they don't cleanly
cover the entire event. I mean, when you have this many
sightings, there's just no way that one SX explanation can
cover the whole thing up. Now we do need to remember the
context. It was 1973, which is not a
normal year. 1973 is widely considered one of the peak UFO
years in U.S. history. Massive siding waves across
multiple states, frequent low altitude encounters, numerous
humanoid reports. Even nearby regions like Ohio
and Indiana broadly reported this.
Objects with multiple with multi colored lights and low level
maneuvering radar and pilot encounters.
So people are seeing these things from the ground, from the
air, and on radar. Muncie fits into a larger
national pattern and wasn't just an isolated anomaly.
Now, if you approach this with an open but rational mindset, a
few conclusions do stand out. Something real happened.
The density and consistency of reports strongly suggests that
they suggest this wasn't just an imagination or hoax, that
multiple people observed genuine aerial anomalies.
In other words, UF OS they aren't easily explained by
conventional causes. And while some sightings may
have mundane explanations, the core events, the landings, the
entity reports, the coordinated sightings, they remain
unresolved. To me, the high strangeness is
the key signal here. The most important aspect isn't
just lights in the sky, it's the behavioral anomalies, objects
reacting to observers, apparent landing events, entity
encounters. This proof is the case beyond
simple misidentifications. You can say, well, you know,
you, you mistook an airplane for a UFO light.
But when the thing lands in your backyard, that's a little bit
different. It fits a larger pattern of
intelligence driven phenomena across 1973.
And even after that we see repeated localized flaps,
similar light configurations and occasional entity interaction.
You know, think about what happened in Las Vegas or what
happened in Florida. Even if you listen to the
arguments of the debunkers, there's still this whole social
thing going on here where people are aware of what's going on and
they're ready for these encounters.
It seems like. Now the bottom line in Muncie is
that it was a classic UFO flab. There were close range
encounters. There was, it did escalate into
high strangeness with these possible alien encounters and
embedded, and it was embedded within a national wave of
activity. So even if you stay cautious
about this, it's hard to actually reduce the entire
episode just down to coincidence or misidentification.
Now, there are some good newspaper articles out here and
I want to take a look at this next one right here.
This is from ipm.org. It says Journey, Indiana close
Encounters of the Muncie kind, the Muncie UFO mania of 1973,
the 1973 Muncie UFO sightings, Indiana's alien mania.
Muncie is a typical Midwestern small city, a very hometown
feel, a crossroads of America. It's a good place to live and
raise a family, says Karen Vincent, executive director of
the Delaware County Historical Society.
At first glance, Muncie seems like another small Midwestern
town that looks can be deceiving.
There are a lot of weird and eerie things that have gone on
in Muncie for many years. I don't think it was out of the
ordinary to have people seeing UFOs here.
It happened before, but in 1973 it was a much bigger deal,
describes Vincent. And 1973.
Something was happening in the skies above Muncie.
What started as whispers turned into something much louder and
much stranger. By October, these UFO sightings
were so abundant that newspaper articles from the time read like
a Hollywood script. Sarah McKinley, archivist at the
Muncie Public Library, says Muncie went through a UFO mania.
Throughout the month of October, there were hundreds of reports
of UFO sightings in Muncie and Delaware County.
It just seemed to explode for about 5 or 6 days, says Vincent.
One in particular, there was a woman who reported that an
object had landed in her backyard.
Her neighbor reported hearing loud clicking noises at the same
time. This is occurrence.
McKinley says a sheriff's deputy came and spoke with her and he
said I don't know what she saw, but she definitely saw something
because she was frightened. Vincent says it seems that the
intersection of Wheeling and Mcgilliard was a hotspot because
there were several sightings in that area.
And then of course, people who aren't people, the stranger's
reports. Just when it seemed strange
enough, things got even weirder. There was supposedly a call to
police from something that happened near Wheeling or the
person who reported it said there are people out here that
aren't people. That was always the really
creepy quote that we found in the newspaper, describes
McKinley. She had seen something silvery
with scales is what she said, Vincent says.
So apparently the aliens landed panic and sued like any good
man, you know, word spread like wildfire. 100 calls to Muncie
police, more calls to the Sheriff's Department.
Mostly it had to do with lights and moving objects, maybe lights
low to the ground. It seemed to have to do with a
lot of colored lights, Vincent explains.
By late October, the sightings had become part of the town's
identity, blurring the line between news and pop culture.
There was a Halloween costume contest at the mall at October.
A lot of people dressed in outer space outfits because of the
whole UFO buzz that was going around Muncie, McKinley
describes. We found an ad in the newspaper
from November 9th, 1973 from the Dairy Queen that said UF OS have
landed at the North Dairy Queen. Come and get a horrible creature
Sunday. The sightings continued for
years, but the tone began to shift.
More and more explanations began to emerge.
All the way up through 1977, there were stories in the
newspaper, but gradually more and more of them had rational
explanations for what they could be.
They found a piece of tinfoil high in a tree and it was
reflecting lights from neon signs from local businesses,
says McKinley. My favorite one was that UF OS
explanation was an airplane that was flying overhead with a
banner behind it that was advertising stakes for a local
lounge, and that was the UFO, Vincent states.
Reports that came out either concentrated on these
helicopters or weather balloons. So maybe, maybe not.
Well, it's almost like we see in a lot of these you have a
parallel narrative that gets started right after the initial
encounter or sighting. While the skies eventually
quieted, a new kind of light took over the bright lights of
Hollywood. The character that Richard
Dreyfuss plays, Roy Neary in close Encounters of the Third
Kind part of it said in Muncie, he has his UFO experience in
Muncie in the film. The correlation between the two,
because it's only four years apart from when the UFO mania
hit Muncie and when the film came out, there are theories
that that's why they chose Muncie as location, explains
McKinley. To some they're just stories,
but for others, these moments are a history worth preserving.
All of these stories, whether it's a UFO or unsolved
mysteries, I think have an important place in our history
and something that people should know about and study because
it's part of our community's history.
We should embrace that we have those stories here because they
also make us unique. McKinley concludes.
Yeah, oh, I'm not really a bad article, really.
Just kind of go through some of the some of the main points of
this whole thing. So I want to finish up with this
last article here. It's from xonews.org.
Says UFO mania hit Muncie hard in 1973.
It's articles by Keith Royston dated January 2018, says in In
October 1973, The Muncie Star in Muncie, IN rent a UPI story
about 3 UFOs over Tennessee reported by 20 witnesses,
including a County Sheriff in Chester County, Tennessee. 2
UFOs reportedly buzzed 2 young brothers who hid in a chicken
coop. Police blamed the
misidentification objects as merely weather balloons.
Yeah, those weather balloons are all over the place, aren't they?
On October 9th, the Muncie Star reported several 100 people saw
mysterious multi colored lights in the sky over Muncie.
Police blamed it on weather balloons.
I mean, how many of these weather balloons we have
floating around out there? On October 13th, the UPI
reported that two shipyard workers in Pascagoula, Ms.
claimed to have been abducted and taken aboard a UFO by
silvery skinned creatures with big eyes and pointed ears.
The shipyard workers stories were verified under hypnosis.
Now of course we're talking about Pascagluga, that's Charles
Hickson and and Calvin Parker. We've talked about them multiple
times on this podcast and they were actually recorded by the
Sheriff's Department unbeknownst to themselves while the sheriff
was out of the room. And everything they said in that
private conversation they had in that in that interrogation room
lined up perfectly with their official story.
Moving on here says other reports began coming in from
Muncie and Delaware County, Indiana of a rash of UFO
sightings. The Starz newspaper article
headline read UFO reports rampant in the South.
Indiana National Guard helicopters were blamed for
these UFO sightings, so you kind of see the narrative as it
progresses along here. On October 14th, a Dayton, OH
woman told police that an oblong object with blinking lights
killed 2 cows when it landed in a field.
October 17th, the Muncie Evening Press reported an encounter of a
Muncie woman who claimed that a UFO had landed behind her home.
The patrolman at the scene said that Lady did see something
because she was terrified. There are people out there that
are not people. One caller told police about
said about the incident near the town of the of Wheeling N
Muncie. Now getting back into this lady
a little bit, I find this to be actually pretty interesting
because if you ask AI about this, it tells you that the
encounter involving Misses Pierce, that's what she's
referred to in the newspaper articles at 226 N Davis St. in
Muncie, IN is one of the most grounded and in some ways most
compelling cases from the 1973 UFO wave because it combines a
named witness, a precise location, police involvement and
corroborating sensory details. And it says the setting October
1973. This is during the peak of the
Muncie flat. By the time Missus Pierce made
her call, Muncie was already in the middle of a full scale UFO
outbreak. Police lines were flooded
nightly with reports of low flying objects, multi colored
lights and strange aerial phenomena.
Against that backdrop, her experience stands out because it
wasn't just a sighting in the sky, it was reported as a
landing event at a private residence.
Now the core incident. The date on this is mid-october
1973. Time approximately 8:54 PM.
Location behind her home at 226 N Davis St.
Muncie. At that hour Missus Pierce
contact the police with a startling claim a UFO had landed
behind her house. When officers responded, they
didn't recover physical evidence of the craft, but what they did
observe became central to the case.
The responding patrolman, identified in reports as William
Kirby, stated that she was visibly terrified.
Her reaction appeared genuine and not fabricated.
His conclusion was simple, but telling.
She definitely saw something. For many investigators,
witnesses, demeanor is critical. Fear that appears authentic,
especially when assessed immediately after the event
often carries weight, was in corroborating detail.
This is the clicking sounds. This is where the case gets
deep. A neighbor independently
reported hearing strange clicking noises at the same time
as the alleged landing, and that matters for two reasons.
It introduces multiple witness confirmation, even if indirect,
and it adds a mechanical or physical dimension to the event.
Clicking of mechanical sounds shows up in other close
encounter cases, often described as rhythmic, metallic, or unlike
conventional engines. So there's no detailed craft
shape report. It is no confirmed entity citing
in her specific case, and no physical traces were publicly
documented. But the claim was not of a
distant object, it was a landing in close proximity to her home.
And that alone elevates it from a typical light in the sky
report to a close encounter. Now the weird thing about this
is it's almost like this thing is just phasing into our
reality, looking more and more interdimensional all the time.
Now back to this article here at XO News.
It goes on. It says other reports began
coming in from Muncie and Delaware County, Indiana of a
rash of UFO sightings. The Starz newspaper article
headline read UFO reports rampant in the South.
Indiana National Guard helicopters were blamed for
these UFO sightings. On October 14th, a Dayton, OH
woman told police that an oblong object blinking lights killed 2
cows when it landed in a field. So about the time we had this
guy in town saying 1 landed in the backyard, we've got another
one saying, yeah, hey, I had two cows killed by one of these
sayings. On October 17th, the Muncie
Evening Press reported an encounter of a Muncie woman who
claimed that a UFO had landed behind her home.
The patrolman at the scene, this is when we're talking about,
said that Lady did see something because she was terrified, quote
UN quote. There are people out there that
are not people. One caller to police said about
an incident near the town of Wheeling, N Muncie.
So we have reports of alien encounters separately from the
report of this UFO. Landing in the lady's backyard
on October 19th, the Muncie Evening Press reported a
Blackford County Sheriff's deputy seeing a strange looking
object with an arm like extension over a manufacturing
plant. On October 20th, the Muncie Star
reported UFO sightings near Portland, IN.
Throughout October 1973, UFO sightings were reported every
day from Texas to southern Indiana, But by November, the
local UFO craze was over. Northwestern University
researcher J Allen Heineck, of course we all have heard him,
said there was no doubt Earth was being visited by aliens.
Steven Spielberg's movie close Encounters of the Third Kind was
set largely in Muncie, though not filmed there, and partially
based on Heineck's accounts. Now, the editor's note says, I
certainly hope that the guy responsible for losing all those
weather balloons was sacked. Yeah, no kidding.
With recent news reports of secret Pentagon investigations
of flying saucers and unidentified flying objects
going back over a period of several years, it's important to
note that the Muncie that Muncie into Indiana, all of East
Central IN really got there first.
Well, this phenomena has been along for so long, goes on it
says. Muncie's dramatic 1973 brush
with UFO mania was recently cited in a magazine article.
And, of course, 2017 saw the 40th anniversary of the release
of Steven Spielberg's close Encounters of the Third Kind,
which was set largely in Muncie, although it was not filmed
there. Before any of that happened,
however, in October 1973, Muncie newspapers ran daily stories
about sightings of UF OS around the country.
And then the flying saucer sightings began in earnest,
right in her own backyard. Now people can say, well, this
is just a matter of suggestion, kind of a of this mass hysteria,
but I think the sightings are too specific for that really
goes on and says the next day, I know.
The UPI story appeared this time on the front page of the Star.
Expanding on the Tennessee sightings, two brothers, 13 and
nine, took refuge in a chicken coop when they were buzzed by a
UFO in Chester County, Tennessee, two days later.
According to a story published in the Muncie Star, police find
a weather balloon that was likely responsible for UFO
sightings north of Indianapolis. Now, you see they're kind of
making a jump there. Sure, they're releasing these.
I think they release these weather balloons now about every
30 minutes. So we have, as you can imagine,
probably dozens of these sayings, if not a couple dozen
going at any time. But but honestly, do we have
that many weather balloons around?
Then it goes on and says then on Wednesday, October 10th, 1973
the UFO craze came to Muncie. The evening before the Muncie
Star reported mysterious multi colored lights were seen by
several 100 people. About 100 people called police.
Sheriff Sergeant Richard Connor said over the course of two
hours, another 50 to 60 people called Muncie police.
So you got 150 a 160 people calling the police.
You have to wonder how many didn't get through on the phone.
Police theorize that weather balloons were to blame.
Newton Sprague, director of Ball State University's observatory,
offered the balloon theory tear. This is of course 1970s.
Weather balloons were the go to narrative on these things.
If this happened today, I would imagine they'd be calling these
things all drones goes on, it says.
Then on October 13th, local newspapers carried a UPI story
about two shipyard workers in Pascagoula, Ms. who said that
you're abducted and taken aboard a UFO by silvery skin creatures
with big eyes and pointed ears. They reported encounter became
one of the most famous of the UFO era.
Of course, like we said, we've done this, this, this is one of
the, I think bedrock cases and, and UFO lower UFO history.
Really. The floodgates were open for UFO
sightings in the Muncie area. On October 17th, 1973, four or
five Indiana National Guard helicopters were blamed for a
ration of UFO sightings over Muncie in Delaware County.
The choppers prompted 40 calls to police.
The next day in Dayton County, Ohio, a woman told police that
an oblong object with blinking lights killed 2 cows when it
landed in a field. In the meantime, UPI reported
that hypnosis supported this of two Mississippi men who said
they were abducted. Northwestern University
researcher Jay Allen Heink, upon whose cases Spielberg's movies
was partially based, said there was no doubt Earth was being
visited by aliens. October 17th, the Muncie Evening
Press reported on a few days of Muncie UFO encounters.
More UFOs reported in Muncie. Read the headline and then it
says Missus Pierce at 226 N Davis called police at 8:54 PM.
Tuesday to report that a UFO had landed behind her home.
Patrolman William Kirby, who was at the scene, said, quote, that
Lady did see something because she was terrified, UN quote.
A neighbor heard clicking sounds at about the same time.
These are just some of the ones that we that we can hear about.
It finishes up with this quote. I love this.
I'll believe in one when it flies through my living room,
Muncie's deputy police Chief Jack Turner told the evening
Press. So even though he's got 160
phone calls reporting these things and people all over his
district talking about it, he's not going to believe it till he
sees it with his own eyes. Kind of a doubting Thomas.
What I like about this is that it's 1973.
So the majority of people, while they may be watching network
news and network sitcoms and dramas from say 7:00 to 10:00,
most of them aren't on their phone.
So you still at 1973, you still have a lot of people looking
outside or being outdoors doing things.
And I think that might have also been part of the reason why so
many people saw these UF OS, they were unidentified flying
objects and reported them to police.
I think it would have been a lot better off if those people would
have just taken the time to document what they saw, wrote
down on a piece of paper. So we'd have these reports 4050,
sixty years later. Anyway, a lot of cool sightings.
They're taking us clear back to 1973.
It's like the old saying goes, the more things change, the more
they stay the same. Until next time.
This is UFO warning over and out.